


The Last to Fall

by chels0792



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: RusAme, rusamebigbang2018
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 08:36:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16489268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chels0792/pseuds/chels0792
Summary: Alfred faces the consequences of the Cold War. All is never truly lost, though, is it? The future soldiers on."Poetic, he thought. Ashes and memory; and him, holding the lighter. If only Ivan had been there to see him. He would have been proud."





	The Last to Fall

The Chamber was warm, despite the late hour and the muffling darkness on the lawn. Cleaning agents and brand cologne did not mix well, and his stomach protested the air of the room.

The stage anchored itself in a sea of black suits and pencil skirts, important people tittering to fill the anticipatory quiet. Marble columns flanked Old Red, White, and Blue. Bright white light colored the face of his watch.

Alfred turned shaded the glass from the spotlight with a curled hand. Mahogany and gold filigree reflected its face, and the second hand marched exonerably onward. 

Behind him, Alfred could hear a dozen conversations from the parapet above the podium: all fifty of his children, seated side by side above his head and out of sight, if not out of earshot. If not out of his mind.

Television cameras opened their bulbous eyes, a speaker flagged the audience, George set his foot on the bottom stair, and Alfred’s heart ached. It wasn’t Alaska’s fault, he thought as George approached the stand, but she paid the price for her fathers’ titanic struggle, and would have paid either for victory or failure.

A chorus of lipstick countdowns and ticking fingers. He wished he had argued to sit beside them.

“Mr. Speaker,” Bush said with a smile, “distinguished Members of Congress, honored guests, our very own united states, and fellow citizens: Thank you very much for that warm reception.”

He turned to smile at his wife, who smiled in turn at Alfred. “You know, with the big buildup this address has had,” George said, “I wanted to make sure it would be a big hit, but I couldn't convince Barbara to deliver it for me.”

Laughter in the audience. Alfred showed his teeth.

Bush talked of big changes, promises made, big problems and bigger solutions. He thanked the troops, mentioned ‘Kilroy was here’; he thanked the taxpayers. He said, “What a group of kids we’ve sent out into the world.”

Alfred wished vehemently that he’d chosen a different phrase. He felt guilty enough.

“But the biggest thing that has happened in the world,” Bush said with a pause, “in my life, in our lives, is this: By the grace of God, America won the cold war.”

The applause was thunderous. Alfred followed, wooden, and heard his children follow.

Bush nodded, showed a smile, tapped the podium. “A world once divided into two armed camps now recognizes one sole and preeminent power, the United States of America. And they regard this with no dread. For the world trusts us with power, and the world is right. They trust us to be fair and restrained. They trust us to be on the side of decency. They trust us to do what's right.”

The world, Alfred thought, trusted America as far as they could throw him.

Alfred imagined the expression on Arthur’s face if his father had been sitting in the Chamber beside him. He imagined the glance pale and weathered Germany would cast to Prussia, Norway to Denmark, Ukraine to Belarus. Belarus, unshakable, would stare straight ahead through her sorrow.

Belarus and Alaska looked painfully alike. He realized he was tapping the heel of his shoe on the leg of his chair and forced himself to sit without fidgeting. He wondered if Bush glanced down at the speech prepared with Alfred’s own scribbles in the margins. 

Bush turned to the problems at home—economy, unemployment, growth—and Alfred reclined in his chair for the cameras. His people reeled from depression—a few mistakes too many—but Alfred himself felt strong, and that was a positive omen. A positive omen and for him, an immeasurable relief.

Bush tapped a finger on the podium. “This is a fact: Strength in the pursuit of peace is no vice; isolationism in the pursuit of security is no virtue.

“Therefore, let us never forget those who lost their lives in this endeavor, whether they were allies or otherwise. We—America—must wish the Russian people healing in their sorrow, and indeed, share the grief; because the loss of a nationhead is never an isolated tragedy, and the loss of Mister Ivan Braginski this last Christmas is a terrible heartbreak for the entire human race.”

Above his head, Alfred heard a multitude of hands reaching, and the sound of a muffled sniff. His stomach twisted. He could feel the smile, plastic on his face.

“And so,” Bush said, “we move on together, a rising nation, the once and future miracle that is still, this night, the hope of the world. Thank you. God bless you, and God bless our beloved country. Thank you very, very much.”

Bush gave him a point as he left the podium, and Alfred gazed over his glasses and pointed right back. The Chamber thundered its approval, its hope, its victory.

Alfred gave the closest camera a winning white smile and a thumbs-up, a Hollywood hello that felt like wood and tasted like metal, like salt.

Night waxed onward: Alfred offered handshakes to senators and blue-eyed winks at aggressive cameramen. A hug for Oregon when she left, well wishes for the long, snowy drive home. He pressed a kiss to New York’s cheek, careful not to smudge her lipstick; he received a firm Texas handshake and lifted a finger to tap the wire frame of his glasses and nod.

Florida pulled him by the sleeve into the wall, reached upward to fix his hair. Illinois tapped his elbow for a formal goodbye. Tennessee offered a wave on his way out the door with California, who rapped the door frame for his attention and was gone.

Alfred escaped the Chamber before midnight with an arm around Arkansas and an arm around Maryland. He bid them both goodnight with a gentleman’s bow in the hall and turned to sprint for his office, for a moment of quiet.

Behind him, muffled on the crimson rug, he heard footsteps.

Alaska’s charcoal eyeliner was smudged. Her glossy lipstick cracked and flaked. Her hands were empty of tissues, so Alfred offered what he had to clean her face. He held her hand—cold, always cold—and tried not to panic when she leaned into his shoulder to cry lonely, silent tears.

He didn’t have the answers. Her fingers were warm with his body heat before she could stand on her own, could dab at her eyes with his stained handkerchief, to hold his gaze a second too long before she turned to flee for New York’s open arms. As he opened his office door, Alfred heard D.C. offer a warm cup of cocoa and a bed.

The latch closed behind him; the lock landed in place.

His office was quiet, his chair empty, the walls bare except for a portrait of his first father behind the desk, immortalized in paint.

The sky though the window was clear and black. The White House yard was coated in soft white sleet. Security left tracks on the sidewalk, quickly filled by tumbling snow. There were so many stars.

Alfred stared up at cloudless eternity, at the universe above and around him. He thought again of the unforgiving second hand of the clock and frowned at his reflection, blue-eyed and pale. 

They were all just children, he thought, playing in the sand on a dying rock rocketing through a galaxy that could be no more than one of an infinite number of galaxies just like itself. The thought was strangely soothing; an odd, cosmic comfort.

He turned away from the window to land in his chair, reached for the phone.

He knew the number without the help of the black ledger in the topmost drawer. He lifted the receiver to his ear to hear the familiar ring. Tapped the desk with an impatient fingernail.

The line clicked. “I thought you’d call.”

Alfred caught himself, forced his nails from his scalp and back onto the desk. He tried for humor. “What’s cookin’, good lookin’?”

“I watched your State of the Union tonight. A little self-centered, wasn’t it? ‘One sole and preeminent power’? ‘Leader of the world’?”

Arthur had to hear the hoarseness of his voice, had to know by the sound that Alfred didn’t feel well. “He watered it down from the first couple drafts. After that he wouldn’t let me write anymore.”

He heard the definitive sound of a closing door. “You sound sick.”

Alfred scrubbed a hand through his hair, gazed down at the desktop. His eyes felt gritty. “Been better.”

He heard the squeal of mechanical gears. Behind the safety of a closed door, his mother’s voice carried a severity, an honesty that implied he knew exactly the answer to the question he asked: “Have you talked to your father?”

He swallowed something that stung. “No. I figured he’d be out.”

“Not exactly a time for celebration,” Arthur said. “I doubt anyone’s on the town after all this mess. Even that lazy alcoholic.”

“Doctor said he shouldn’t be drinking.”

“He’s not. He’s bitching. Called me this morning just to waste my time.”

There was no frustration in Arthur’s voice. Alfred let himself smile, a little. “Good. That’s what I like to hear.” Then: “Have you talked to Canada?”

For a long moment, Arthur was quiet. “I have, yes. You should call.”

Pens and colored pencils clattered in their plastic cup, and Alfred dug out his favorite, and a yellow legal pad from the drawer. “I don’t think he wants to talk to me. He’s okay, though, right? Does he need anything? Food, men?”

“I’d think a call from his brother would be just the thing.” A shush of fabric—probably, Alfred thought, the sound of Arthur crossing a leg over his knee. “Don’t ruin a good thing now that you’ve bridged this. He missed you.”

Alfred drew absent-minded ovals on a legal pad with his stumpy blue pencil. He imagined Arthur seated, cross-legged, in his study where the sun hit the curtain at just the right angle to light the brass knob on the door. “I’ll think about it.”

His mother sipped something, and Alfred would have bet money he’d spiked his tea with whiskey the moment Ivan had—fallen. Not celebrating, Alfred thought. His ass. “Cardhu?”

“Old Pulteney, actually.” 

The good liquor, even. Alfred pressed hard enough to leave a circular mark on the legal pad, asked with his eyebrows mockingly lifted. “Dash of cream?”

“Naturally.”

Alfred added large black eyes and Martian bodies to his creations with a heavy monogrammed pen and reached for the cup. “You have no class.”

There was a smile he could hear, teeth he could almost see. The echo of an old rivalry, sharp and pitiless. “I’ve got baggage.”

Alfred frowned at his aliens, lined obediently on the page. “We all do.”

Arthur snorted over the line. “Please.” A sip. “Be as glad as the rest of us that menace is gone. I’m sure your people will have a good old-fashioned riot before long. Go burn something down, work yourself out of his mood you’ve been in. It’s unappealing.”

A guard walked a black security dog past the window. Alfred laid his head on his knuckles to watch the pup sniff around. “Have you heard what they’re going to call it?”

Arthur hummed, swallowed, and spoke with a mocking lilt. “’The Russian Federation’. They’re calling themselves a republic now.”

Alfred closed his eyes, denied the wave of emotion that threatened to reach out over the line, to reach for the person who had raised him, who had once rocked him to sleep. He thought again of the second hand, of scars on his musket, and held his unruly emotions in check. “Christ.”

He could hear the flipping pages of Arthur’s datebook in the silence, sips of liquored tea.

“So.” Arthur finally said. “Why’d you call?”

Alfred followed the line of his lower lip with a knuckle, beat down the lump in his throat by force. “Looking for advice.”

Sip. “My advice is that you get a good long sleep. You look like you need it. ‘Course, the camera adds ten pounds.”

“Not for me.” Lips pressed tightly together, throat tight. “Alaska’s in bad shape.”

A sudden stillness. “Ah. And she’s come to you, and you’ve no idea what to tell her, do you.”

He’d never bothered to turn on the lamp, and the room grew steadily darker as clouds shadowed the wheeling sky. Alfred laid a hand over his eyes to block out the promise. He didn’t mean for his voice to falter. “She looks at me like she’s not sure.”

A click. A teacup laid to meet its saucer. A sigh.

Alfred ran a hand through his hair, rubbed his nose where plastic pads left depressions in his skin. “What do you do? What would you do?”

Arthur spoke, and Alfred could hear a sadness, something ancient and alien. “If I were the one in your shoes—to explain these things to a child—then I suppose I would try to put it in a context she can appreciate.”

Alfred stared at the wall. “None of them have ever looked at me like that.”

“She’s seen this kind of thing before.”

“No.” Alone in his darkening office, Alfred thought again of rain, mud, blood on his gun. “The last one we tackled didn’t die.”

“Government in the East has always been corrupted,” Arthur said. “It’s a wonder any of them have survived as long as they have. They need help if they’re to rebuild into something better. You were only part of a massive effort to rid the world of something truly despicable. Very heroic, really, on our end,” Arthur told him. “We were grateful for your help.”

The man with the black dog passed from sight, and Alfred gazed at the glass where they had been. “Yeah.”

“Ivan existed in one form and one mind for nearly a thousand years before that idiot Lenin grew out of his britches, and he was a child nation longer than that.” Arthur said. “I’m sure Braginski considered your little war a distraction at best.”

He paused to sip his tea, to think. “At least he got one last good fight out of it. Imagine the evil that could have been wrought without you. You did a great thing. Who better to end the evil than the kid who grew greater than evil’s power?”  

Alfred tried to sigh out the pressure in his chest, pressed a hand to his sternum. “I guess.”

“And as much as I know you’d prefer otherwise, you are not, in fact, the one sole and preeminent power on this Earth,” Arthur added. “There were other forces acting that weren’t you, that would have acted regardless of American interference. Nearly bloody all of us.”

Snow wheeled past the window, and Alfred reached for his light, to flood the room with something that wasn’t cold or dark. “I know that.”

Arthur covered his receiver to muffle an intruding voice. “You always find an obnoxious way to work these things out. You’re good with people, just use your instincts.”

Alfred leaned forward with a squeak of gears, lifted his glasses from his nose to scrub his face. “I’m going to call her, try to feel it out.”

Alfred could hear sincere concern in his mother’s tone. “Do call me if you need more advice, for your kids. You know how bored I get with only the frog to talk to.”

Alfred made a sour promise. The receiver clicked under his finger.

He dragged his drawer open for his ledger, flicked pages until he found his states’ names. Flipped another page, followed the line with a finger until he found Alaska’s signature, her number.

Maybe Arthur was right, and it was arrogance which led him to challenge Russia the way he had.  His own mother had taught him that empires were ruthless, merciless, callous, hard. There were no sires, no children, no innocents in an empire’s mind. They knew survival, and that was all.

Empires did not hold their swords because they’d been politely asked to show some humanity, and Ivan as a man couldn’t have been expected to abstain from his own demons either. Alfred could not have—should not have—tried to save Ivan from the ravages of communism on his people. It was never his business, and to place himself in danger of permanent death—to lay America in the path of certainty—had been an incredibly stupid thing to do. 

Alfred set the handset on his shoulder.

Ivan lost weight, Alfred thought, before the end. A lot of weight. He was certain that Braginski had donated whatever meager rations he’d been given to other citizens, to other soldiers, to the first starving child he’d seen on the street. How hungry had Braginski been when he’d fainted? How many days’ worth of food had he offered away?

He dialed.

Ivan hadn’t worn his shined Soviet cap for the interview, had left his immaculate coat unbuttoned, his hair uncut. Alfred wondered if anyone else had noticed the conspicuous missing piece, the curious mistakes. 

His finger paused over the final number.

No one, he thought, would mourn the Russian Empire. No one would mourn Soviet Russia. No one would really mourn Ivan, except maybe his sister. Maybe both sisters, if Ukraine felt emotional. His funeral would be formal, the attendance reserved.

He set the handset on the cradle without calling. He wasn’t sure he could explain war to the descendant of an empire that was, very suddenly, no more. He had no idea how to comfort an estranged, orphaned daughter.

He remembered the broadcast, remembered sitting in the oval office with President Bush and a handful of select personnel who happened to stay after their meeting for the news.

_“The Soviet Union, as a subject of international and geopolitical reality, no longer exists.”_

He remembered sitting with one hand on his knee and the other on his mouth, eyes trained only on the Soviet Union. His peculiar eyes were bright on the screen—too bright—above deep bruised wells of sleeplessness, and he seemed even paler than he should have been. Alfred had seen dehydration in his chapped lips, starvation in the sharp bones of his face, exhaustion in the heavy set of his shoulders.

_“But Yeltsin and his commonwealth colleagues say they know what they’re doing, already signing agreements this weekend on nuclear weapons, which they say they will jointly control. The TAS news agency says they have agreed to cooperate on military and foreign affairs in general. All of which seems to put Gorbachev out of a job and a new government into gear.”_

He towered over two Russian representatives who seemed pleased to speak with journalists. He must have been in incredible pain, and Alfred was impressed—impressed, but not surprised—that he still managed to stand for interview in what would become his final days on Earth.

_“Now we go live to the Kremlin, where our Russian correspondents have agreed to say a few words. If we’re lucky, nationhead Ivan Braginski will be in attendance and may be willing to speak on the topic of such a rapid change in policy. John Donvan, ABC News.”_

On international television, in front of every human being and nationhead on Earth, Ivan Braginski had buckled like a puppet on empty strings to lay like a dead thing, massive and porcelain pale and unconscious on the impeccable floor; he was quickly obscured by black suits in a sea of colorful shining inlay, illuminated by chandeliers which were probably worth more than his life in his own country.

Alfred had thought through the pounding of his own heart that the Russian representatives were lucky he hadn’t landed on them. He was certain the Soviet Union had been unconscious before he’d hit the ground: even his scarf had not attempted to soften the cracking impact of his white head on the tile.

He had noted—before he rose to leave the room, quickly, cell phone already in hand—that Ivan’s lurid eyes had been open, empty, and the flamboyant inlay beneath his head was the only echo in their violet stare.

His frustration was loud in the silence, a gust of breath that died as quickly as it came. He popped open the false bottom of his top drawer for the tiny brass key he kept hidden there.

Russia was resilient and ridiculously strong-willed. His house would inevitably recover, but the future was uncertain. Alfred found himself once again in the uncomfortable position of not-knowing: not knowing exactly what the world expected of him, not knowing where to go after the end of the show.

At least the Soviet Union was gone. Cold, hollow, tortured Ivan was at peace. Rus could rest, Alfred thought, free from pain and hatred: he could finally sleep.

The bottom drawer always squeaked. He reached inside.

Braginski, he thought. The man who couldn’t speak had expressed his loyalty the only way he could: through action. By bowing out of the fight for everyone to see, Ivan had removed himself from the unstable administration’s power so that he couldn’t be used to hurt anyone else. In his final act he’d regained control and removed himself as a weapon of cruelty, and Alfred thought the deed uncharacteristically heroic for the taciturn and intolerant nationhead.

He withdrew a silver flask, tarnished with age and use.

He remembered sprinting over the bloated boards of New York docks to meet Rus when he stepped from his boat at port, delighted and winded and willing to try to make a friend. He remembered three more ships than he’d expected, the explanation: Russia, Ivan had told him with a smile he had once trusted, stood beside him in his struggle for freedom from his British oppressors. Ivan stood ready in his ports should Britain stray too close.

Convenient, Alfred thought as he unscrewed the bulb cap, that Ivan befriended a nation with ports that never froze.

He remembered candlelight over the desk on another clear mid-autumn night, when Rus guarded the flame from cool window breezes with an ungloved hand and instructed each letter he wrote the European powers: which nationheads would better appreciate a studied, smooth hand, and which would be charmed by the scrawling of an enthusiastic farm boy. Rus would lean on a fist and watch him write, remind him to sign with his nation title as well as his human name, tap a long white finger on the back of Alfred’s chair in thought.

How interesting that Rus never signed any of the letters he wrote, Alfred thought wryly. Almost as if he hadn’t wanted the other European nations to know how much influence he had in the New World, how close he and the kid had become.

He remembered a hand on his shoulder, and the kind words Rus had offered during America’s very first civil war: that all worthy countries fought amongst themselves; that Alfred was strong, for his youth; that Alfred had a birthright to claim, and claim his right to life he would.

Rus had offered him advice during America’s first real Depression. He’d stopped Alfred in the hall after a particularly unforgiving meeting and laid a hand on him, and the act reminded Alfred of Mobile Bay, of Palmetto Ranch, of Yorktown.

There in the UN hall Rus offered Alfred his decorated flask. He had laughed when Alfred coughed. He told him he’d grow into liquor, advised that he close his ears to the other nations’ cruelties and focus instead on his homestead, the way he once had when he bravely journeyed West. He told him to take another shot and likened the unpleasant mouthful to the siege of Fort Sumter, when Alfred had taken the bitter pill that was the first uprising of his people. He capped the flask, handed it to Alfred, and left alone.  

Alfred took a shot. Ivan would never have filled a flask with whiskey.

They had once paced the amber fields under the heat of the summer sun, and Ivan had told him the story of a wounded wolf pup he’d once found in the wilderness as a child. He told Alfred that he sat beside the pup all through the frigid night, cradling it in his lap as it faded from life to provide what little comfort he could. He’d buried it, Ivan had said with his nose in the folds of his scarf, and told his sisters he’d been lost.

He scrubbed a hand over his eyes. He dried his fingers on his shirt.

Weeks before Ivan’s revolution they’d eaten at a busy diner in Virginia, and Ivan had mocked the burger on his plate. He’d told Alfred the story of a little chamomile flower his sister had planted in a clay pot and forgotten, and that he fertilized the mat of flowers once a month. Flowers, he had said, shared none of the allegiances or grievances of mankind.

Alfred had taken the declaration as a statement of fact, of wisdom. He had no reason to believe otherwise, even when Ivan looked so pale, moved too slowly, ate so much.

Arthur had been sick during the first world war. Alfred had thought his motherland was suffering from German airstrikes, but Matthew had bitterly set him straight: what Alfred saw in his motherland was the fall of the British Empire, the deafening finale of what had been Britannia. He learned too late that the look of catastrophe was the same between empires.

The dark room was empty, too quiet for a night that should have been triumphant. Why didn’t he feel like victory?

George gazed down at him, neither smiling nor condemnatory. Alfred shoved from the window to meet him in the center of the room.

He heard his own voice, tinny and pathetic in the silence: “What do I do?”

Again: “What did I do?”

Finally, with a tongue that tasted like salt, Alfred confessed the words he knew he should have told Alaska, the ones that faltered and festered in his chest. He pleaded with the image on the wall. “I saved Berlin, I saved Germany and Gilbert. I saved Arthur. Why couldn’t I save him?”

He should have known, Alfred thought. He should have seen that Imperial Rus was sick. He had been too enchanted with the big wars to notice a friend in need. He should have known.

Alfred wrapped his arms around his middle, confessed to a lifeless memory, and thought that he sounded like a child. “I didn’t mean for him to die.”

He remembered the towering nation who had been the first to shake his hand, the first to acknowledge his fight for survival. He remembered the Red marshal who stood head and shoulders above young stalks of corn, the one with the heavy boots that left designs on every dirt path they walked. The man who arched an eyebrow when Alfred told a joke that wasn’t supposed to be funny. The friend who withstood the rest of the world with ease, because that was the only way lonely Ivan knew how to live.

He rolled the silver cap in his fingers, tasted tears and honey. If only he had just reached out a hand to lay on Ivan’s shoulder, maybe the fighting would have been more bearable. If only he had reached out a hand, maybe he could have saved him.  

“It was an accident.”

Snow continued to fall.

“I thought he’d live forever.”

George was silent; his father was lead and pigment, without life. January covered the White House in a black blanket.

Whiskey sang in the flask. “I never got to say goodbye.” 

No, he thought into the emptiness of the universe, to the impassive portrait. No one alive would mourn the Soviet Union. No one would think fondly of the tsars, would recount sunny memories with the Russian Empire. But for the rest of his days, Alfred would grieve Ivan.  

Alfred took shot for courage, thought that liquor never burned his throat anymore. He took another, a shot for calm; then he took a third, for the missing party that would have complained about the taste of whiskey, and set the flask beside the lamp.  

He reached for his glasses, laid them on his nose. He coughed once to clear his throat of sentiment and whatever remained unspoken.

Washington watched him reach for his legal pad, watched him snatch up his favorite pen. Scrub his sleeve over his face. Sniffle and settle, set his face to think. Breathe. Make something happen.

He did owe Ivan for his support over the early years. Surely it couldn’t be strange to want to return the favor. No one would question a good Christian nation’s desire to aid a people in crisis. The other nationheads would allow it.

Even if he only acted post-humus in the memory of a man who had once been a friend.

His pen clicked, and he scribbled a list on a fresh page. He had more than he needed. He could split federal funding , devote some to re-establishing Russia’s devastated economy, to teaching them how to hold jury trials and about free press and political campaigning. Volunteers were always available to travel. Prominent and local religious groups would leap at the chance to spread their gospel over the sea. Everybody wanted to be a hero.

Even Arthur had admitted, Alfred thought as he rose to tuck his pen back into his breast pocket, that America had already done a good thing. It wouldn’t be heroic to let the Russian empire suffer the first decades of his decline alone. Imagine how the Russian people would hurt.

Imagine the good he could spread, he thought, and dropped the flask back into its dark hiding place, kicked the door closed, reached for the tiny key. Imagine how grateful Ivan’s people would be for the help.

With the list folded in his breast pocket Alfred threw open the door and jogged into the hall. Human rights, he thought, market and trade. Ivan had cared more about his people than his own life. Ivan would want to help his children at any cost, and Alfred knew he would have appreciated the aid whether his administration would approve or otherwise.

And as he’d already demonstrated in Berlin, he thought as carpet masked his footsteps, even the Kremlin couldn’t stop him from airdropping food and water on a desperate population.

He settled his face into familiar lines and kicked the door of the Opal Office inward so that the hinge struck the opposite wall.

Heads swung in surprise.

America would be the first to offer aid, even if America offered its hand alone. It was what Russia had once done for him, secondary motivations be damned.

He spread his arms in the doorway and watched his excitement spread one by one to the tired faces around the room. “Who knows a humanitarian?”    

He should have asked Arthur where nationheads went after death. Wherever Ivan was, Alfred hoped he was warm.

\--

The Grand Palace glowed in the window, burst outward like rotten fruit. At its filthy core the Kremlin was encased in ice and sludge, vibrant colors fading, dimmer by the day. Madness would soon descend upon him, if he wasn’t already in the throes of insanity.

The paper in his hands spoke to him in German, black and bold and utterly intrepid: The Wall had fallen. With each brick, Ivan thought, so fell the tsars. Only time stood between him and the end, and Ivan could do nothing. He could not turn back the clock.  

He remembered the tastes of bone meal and blood on his tongue. He remembered the chill of death, the flat plane of Kremlin tile on his cheek as he lay and ached from every joint, every bone; as he stared stupidly at the finality of the end, unable to lift a hand to save himself even as his children rushed to reach him, to lay him flat. To force air into gray lungs, to demand life from a heart that had ceased its beating a century before their grandparents had walked the earth.

He had been cold when he’d woken, had felt frost in the marrow of his bones. He had asked one of the nurses how long he’d been dead, and for a newspaper. Men had rushed to meet him, and Yeltsin.

He knew Saint Petersburg. He knew the language, the scent of newsprint. He remembered the taste of liquor, the fabric of the scarf he carried like an imperial crown. He had known Yeltsin when he hurried into the hospital room with his guards in tow to meet him.

Ivan had not known his name. He was unable to answer when the nurses invoked him to cry down the hall for more people to help the nine strong men who dragged him back from Yeltsin’s throat.

The human lifespan was too short for foresight. Yeltsin could not understand why Ivan was in so much pain, why he had avoided the Kremlin like plague since he’d woken. His new—president—remained terrified of his mention and had sent word of dignitary dinner in the Grand Palace by messenger, had written his tentative request that Ivan attend.

He heard shoes on the tile. Several pairs. English and Russian, spoken in turn. Dignitaries come to meet with the new President of the Russian Federation, pacing down the hall to the stairs where Ivan remained, too tired to stand and hide. 

Catherine, bedecked in her favorite furs and rosy-cheeked, would have been devastated to see the future he had allowed to pass. She would demand to know how her golden era—her art, he thought, her conquests wasted—had come to such an end. She would have held him in her lap and promised to make it better, to make his mistakes right. She would have succeeded where he had failed.

He remembered a long conversation with Tsar Nicholas months before the cheka betrayed his family. He had such high confidence. His poor children had paid the ultimate price, and Russia had suffered for his incompetence.

His house, Ivan thought. His guilt reflected in every window, painted on every brick. His fear of failure, of isolation, of starvation. He had allowed Lenin to play on his doubts, and he had no one to blame for his own stupidity. He had known better. And now—the price he had paid was too high. The means he extracted from his own was not worth the end at which Ivan found himself, alone.

Above his head screamed the two-headed eagle, wings chipped and dusty without care. Golden candelabra, marked with fingerprints, sat cold in their sconces. Chandeliers hung like dead things from the ceiling, untouched by rag or caring hand. The walls were derelict with cracks and handprints. Many of Russia’s vessels had borne Saint Alexander’s name. He would have been enraged by the disrespect Ivan had allowed to come to his hall.

He wanted to call Toris. He wanted to ask Ukraine for her advice, to hear in her useless proposals her particular and unmistakable affection. He wanted to hold his little sister. He wanted to squeeze Natalya tightly to his side and press his kisses to the top of her head, to hear her laugh. 

Black ink lost its boldness in the rush to flee his tears, as his family had fled from the inevitability of time, of failure. Who was left to offer comforts to his fears? None of his own had been there when he had woken. Their absence was a raw, aching treachery.

The Americans conversed quietly amongst themselves as if the rotten corpse around them might reanimate, might lift its head to whimper and cry. They were wrapped in black suits and shoes fitted with rubber soles and expensive wristwatches. In their being they mocked him with finery. In their easy company they mocked his loneliness.

America was as golden as the chandeliers had once been, as bright as the candelabra were intended to shine. He moved smoothly, with a gait that suggested nothing of aching or hunger. “Christ, you can tell this place is wasted. The paint is cracking. What a shithole.”

Ivan followed the cut of his jacket, the pleat of his slacks. Impeccable and annoying, he thought; but the black disgust he knew well, the dark loathing he’d expected to feel, failed to rise. Yet another betrayal, he thought wryly, miserably; and from his own heart, no less. What else could he have expected?

“I don’t know why you need me here.” Alfred ignored his president’s attempts to silence him, gestured at the ceiling. “There isn’t anybody to play with.”  

He tripped over Bush, who stopped dead in front of the stairwell. “What am I going to do, sit in a corner and be quiet?”

His president held out an arm. “Alfred.”

Alfred turned with a scowl.

For a wild moment, Alfred was certain he’d lost his mind.

There on the stairwell, hunched in a pale coat and boots, glaring like some evil ghost from beyond the grave, sat Ivan Braginski; the dead nationhead who the entirety of Alfred’s world had united to destroy. Ivan was pale, paler than his winter coat, paler than the scarf wrapped around his throat like a noose. His lips were drawn into a thin line, sunken eyes bright.

Alfred’s heart skipped a beat. Ivan’s name escaped his numb tongue, unheard and unwanted. “Russia?”

Bush said, “Mister Braginski. I hadn’t heard about your recovery.”

Ivan watched Alfred and said nothing.

His elbow struck his jacket pocket, and Alfred realized that George was talking, answered numbly. “No. Nobody told me.”

Ivan twisted the print, stared at Alfred, twisted and stared. The crinkle of the newspaper between Ivan’s hands set Alfred’s teeth together, raised the hairs on the back of his neck, set his heart to frantic beating.

Bush murmured. “Is there any way they know?”

Ivan’s eyes were hard, so hard. If he looked, would he find grave dirt beneath his fingernails, ragged, moth-eaten scraps at the ends of the scarf Ivan had worn in life? Alfred could taste the adrenaline. “No. They knew I was going, somebody would have said something.”

The Russian diplomat at the head of the party cleared his throat. In his own tongue, he asked, _“You will be joining us for dinner, Mister Russia, sir?”_

Ivan shook his head once. Twisted the paper.

His diplomat took a step forward. _“President Yeltsin is waiting. We pass, please?”_

Ivan broke eye contact, and Alfred released a breath he hadn’t realized he’d held. He turned—slowly—to make a point of gazing over the expanse of the grand stairwell beside him, to measure the wide space and return, unsmiling, to Alfred’s face.

He had expected to see bared teeth, a handsome nose wrinkled in the facsimile of animal ferocity he’d come to know in Alfred’s face. The thought occurred to Ivan that maybe he was truly dead, and had been given access to the world of the living for a final opportunity to see real hatred in Alfred’s young expression. What a thrill, he thought without color, to have sown those seeds in what had once been a kindhearted farm boy.

Alfred neither snarled nor bared his teeth. He watched, lips parted and blue eyes wide like a child, as Ivan heaved himself to his feet, let the paper fall to his side. He followed as Ivan paced down the few steps to the tile.

Ivan left him at the stairwell, continued his way to the Hall of Saint Andrew. If that was the last moment in which he saw Alfred Jones, he thought, then at least his final image had not been one of disgust. The notion was a comfort, oddly so.

Alfred turned until Braginski vanished from sight into the hall previous. He spoke without taking his eyes from the door. “I don’t think anybody knows he’s here, George.”

“Do you need to make a phone call?”

“No.” He’d half expected Ivan to turn back, to spit some poisonous insult over his shoulder with a thin smile and too many teeth. “Not yet.”

The Garden Room buzzed with notables in suits, decked for dinner with several long tables and dozens of chairs, table runners and crystal at each place. Cameramen snapped photos as Alfred shook hands that appeared to be shaken, showed his Hollywood smile, pretended to hear what he was told.

When he reached Yeltsin, he took the offered hand and refused to release him. “Pleasure, Mister President, pleasure. Let me tell you, I’m pleasantly surprised. I thought I’d be the only nationhead around here today, but we just had the luck of running into Mister Braginski downstairs.”

Yeltsin’s curved smile faltered.

“Glad to see him. He’s doing great.” Alfred titled his head, lifted his eyebrows. “I hope I look that good in the grave.”

Silence in the room.

Yeltsin glanced over his shoulder, hand trapped in Alfred’s grip. “Let me assure you that no one had the intention of spreading false information about Mister Braginski’s condition. He was pronounced dead.”

“I know he was pronounced dead. I saw it. On your broadcast. With the rest of the world.” Alfred squeezed, just a little. “We mourned your nationhead, President Yeltsin, I was promised a body.”

Yeltsin held up his other hand, face drawn. “Mister Braginski spent four days in the hospital in critical care. We kept him alive as long as we could.”

Alfred released his hand, because sweat was gross. “I guess his ghost is haunting the Kremlin, then. Y’all should be real worried, let me tell you.”

Yeltsin settled his face back into polite lines. “He woke from six hours’ cardiac arrest just earlier this week.”

Alfred watched him. The corner of the eye, the mouth.

Yeltsin polished his palms, met his glare. “I wasn’t aware that he would be here with us today. I apologize for the inconvenience, Mister Jones. We meant no offense.”

“Is he well?” Bush asked from around Alfred’s shoulder, offered a hand and a smile, and pushed Alfred just an inch to the side. “I can’t imagine I wouldn’t be a little sore, if I were in his shoes.”

“Mister Braginski assures us that he’ll be back to work in no time.” Yeltsin shook, gave Bush a polite nod and a thin smile. “He has our blessing in his recovery, of course. As long as he needs.”

Alfred tapped George with a knuckle, lifted his cell phone out of his pocket. “Start without me.”

He left his president to explain his absence to the cameras and closed the door firmly.

Alfred strode through the anteroom and down the first flight of the grand staircase with his phone in his hand and anxiety in his chest, anger in his throat, cold in his fingers. He dialed Arthur’s number; closed the phone to dial Francis instead.

 

 Finally, Alfred decided to call Matthew first, just in case.

He stopped on the staircase, dialed half the number he knew by heart. 

Paused with his head cocked toward the golden gallery.

Between the tones of the dial pad and his own furious muttering, Alfred could hear—faintly—what he thought was a familiar tune.

He turned the phone in his palm, over and again. He was certain he had to be wrong. Certain he must be hearing things.

Alfred shoved the phone in his pocket to bound down the rest of the stairs, to follow the odd noise. Into Saint Andrew’s hall, where the song rearranged itself into lyrics.

English lyrics. Alfred broke into a jog, lonely in the expanse of soiled regalia. The pocket of his jacket beat a rhythm into his side.

At the door to the Chevalier’s Guard, Alfred stopped to listen:

         _“I love my love, and well she knows._

_I love the ground on where she goes._

_And still I hope that the time will come-_

_Still I hope that the time will come-_

_When she and I will be as one.”_

He forced himself to drag in a breath, then another. Through the chamber, the song—familiar, of course he knew it—echoed into refrain:

_“Black is the color of my true love’s hair.”_

Memory assaulted him: Arthur’s study, another cold London evening by the window on the second floor. He used to watch the rain on the glass, used to follow each lazy drop to the bottom of the sill while Arthur prodded him to recite his arithmetic, his grammar, his lessons for the day.

When they finished on a particularly dark, lonely night, Arthur had pulled him into his chair by the desk, had offered to teach him a song. Alfred knew that game—one to put him carefully to sleep, to set his mind on simple things when Arthur knew he’d be gone for long stretches of time. The folk songs were intended as comforts. Alfred used them well into his adulthood to combat secluded stretches of night, to calm himself when all seemed dark.

Alfred pressed his forehead to the door. He could smell the sea. He could hear the sounds of men docking at port: boots on sealed wood, shouts across the street behind him, waves of the ocean in the distance where Rus’ boats had first appeared.

He had dangled his new shoes off of the dock, had gazed up at the moon and asked when Rus would come back to visit. He had asked Ivan if he wanted to learn a song, one that he could sing while they were apart.

It was so stupid. Rus had other things to do. To babysit the child nation across the sea was not his responsibility. 

They sat together and learned an old English art song about love and beauty while the ocean reached salted tongues for their feet, had laughed when memory failed and they had to begin again. He could still remember the baritone richness of his old friend’s voice, and the memory hurt in places that were still raw, still bleeding. 

_“Her lips are like some roses fair._

_She has the sweetest face_

_And the gentlest hands,_

_And I love the ground on where she stands,_

_I love the ground on where she stands.”_

He remembered standing on the dock, freezing and soaked with the icy water, waving until his arm ached and all of Rus’ boats were gone. He remembered humming the old tune, all the way home, because he needed the noise. He had sung himself to sleep.

The door, old but heavy, didn’t creak. He stepped on something that tried to crunch.

Back to him, oblivious to company, Ivan continued to sing as he paced slowly through the room.

_“Her face, so soft and wondrous fair;_

_The purest eyes_

_And the gentlest hands._

_I love the ground whereon she stands._

_I love the ground whereon she stands.”_

Alfred lifted his loafer. The Berlin Wall lay in tissue paper pieces in the doorway.

_"Black is the color of my true love’s hair.”_

The door slammed with an echo that surely the entire palace could hear. 

Alfred crossed the room before he realized that he’d moved. Arm’s length of the Soviet Union was a very dangerous place to put himself, Alfred thought wildly; but he was too angry, finally, to be afraid, and that was a long time coming.

Alfred seized his lapel in both hands, drove Ivan backward, ignored the insistent tapping of his jacket pocket.

Ivan hit the sunlit wall, closed freezing hands around his shoulders, bared his teeth.

Alfred drew back and slugged him.

Ivan stumbled backward, hand pressed to his face.

Alfred lifted a fist to hit him again, to punish.

Ivan kicked a heavy boot into his stomach.  

Alfred fell back, winded.

Ivan hit him.

Alfred blocked the punch, evaded the next, shouted his fury. “You should be fucking dead!”

His pocket pounded against his belt.  

Ivan swept his feet out from under him.

Alfred hit the tile, and a wave of electricity numbed his arm.

Ivan landed on top of him, pinned his arm to his chest with a stone knee that—despite whatever illness had almost killed him, Alfred thought—felt as heavy as ever.

He tried to free himself. A massive satisfaction, he thought, that Ivan needed both hands and a knee to pin one of his arms. How was that for the spoils of war? “Get the fuck off me.”

Ivan wiped his bloodied cheek, face drawn. “Have you not tasted enough of my blood?”

Ivan’s voice was hoarse. His singing had been crystal clear. That last, aching breath before the final note—he knew it. Ivan had done that every time after he’d been taught.

Alfred held his free arm above his face to block any oncoming blow or backhand. “It’s not supposed to be a sad song. You ruined it.”  

Ivan simpered down at him. “I will sing it as I please.”

Anger spiked, and Alfred tried to hit him.

Ivan caught his wrist int both hands and twisted, hard.

Pain flared to the shoulder, and Alfred realized his mistake.

Ivan used the wrist lock to trap his arm between the tile and his other knee, pinned him to the floor with a grim expression. “You are very, very stupid. This should have been easy for you.”

He’d gotten emotional, Alfred thought through the hammering of his heart, had allowed memory to distract him twice in as many minutes. Arthur would rip him a new one if he ever found out.  “Get off me!”

Alfred twisted his hip, tried to squirm free—and his jacket fell open like a black wing, and his pocket struck the floor with a clink.

Ivan paused, tilted his head.

Alfred kicked, panicked. “No!”

Ivan reached for his coat. He pulled from Alfred’s impeccable suit jacket a silver flask.

Alfred’s harried breathing was loud in the silence. “Don’t.”

Ivan traced with a fingernail the familiar patterns on the front, the head, the signature on the bottom. His own signature, his own seal.

He remembered the day he’d offered the flask, one of his oldest possessions, to a demoralized and exhausted young America as a gift. He remembered the expression Alfred would make when Ivan would lay a hand on him with the promise of brighter skies, of a better future; the twist of his features when vodka’s bite filled his throat. Ivan remembered that he used to laugh, that Alfred would laugh too.

Alfred, Ivan thought, even sunny Alfred could not live without the vices and libations of his kind. The thought saddened him. For a perplexing moment, he thought that he should take the bottle away from him, as if Alfred were a disobedient child.

He lifted the flask to hear that it was half-full.

Alfred showed the whites of his eyes. “Fuck you.”

Ivan lifted his eyebrows, gave the flask another pointed shake.

In the white light reflected from snow outside, Ivan’s pale skin took the color of porcelain, stained with ink below the eyes, shadowed beneath the noble cheekbones in his face. Starvation had a way of carving out the skin, Alfred thought, turning the face into a waxy distortion of the living. He wondered again how hungry Russia must have been when he’d collapsed, when he’d woken, when he’d wandered into the palace in search of his memory.

Crows’ feet, Alfred thought, had not been on Ivan’s face at Malta. He wondered if Ivan knew that every year of his extended life showed on his face.

Ivan lifted the cap to his nose. He took a drink, let the flavor of honey coat his tongue. “Sweet.” He studied the stained cap. “You have always had a taste.”

The hands wrapped around his old flask were creased with age, hardened with work—but they were clean, clean and without the bloody evidence of dehydration in the valleys of the knuckles. His hair was clear of ice, clear of blood. His mouth was set in a frown. Not a leer, Alfred thought; not a smirk, not the scowl that sent even the bravest of his allies into hiding.  

He was neither Rus nor the Soviet Union, Alfred thought, and the realization was like a fist to the gut. The Soviet Union never sang. He insisted that he had no memory of their time on the docks, at the White House, of the dirt paths they paced through stalks of corn and apple orchards. The claim had been much more painful, Alfred knew, because they both knew when he lied.

The man who bowed above him was thin, haggard, shadowed and faded like an old portrait, like George at the White House. Like the portrait of his father, Alfred thought, the man above him looked as though he’d seen too much of life.

He swallowed, stomach rolling. “Please get off me.”

Ivan glanced at him. “No.”

Ivan didn’t celebrate Christmas anymore. He’d made a point in the years previous to cast out every evidence of Western influence on his people when the Bolsheviks took control, had made a point to educate Alfred and his family on the capitalist failings of what should have been a beautiful holiday. Unbidden, he’d described in detail the pigs swimming in an ocean of price tags with their Christian halos sparking out like old Vegas signs, the drooling consumer galloping on all fours toward the nearest outlet mall. He’d been so disgustingly offensive—and so obviously delighted by the shock on Alfred’s face—that even Francis and Arthur had walked away from the short conversation distressed.

The room was quiet, bright, gilded. He thought he could smell the fresh, clean dunes outside the window, could watch their reflection settle on Ivan’s profile like a glow. Ivan denied him without sneering, without the triumphant leer that Alfred had come to know and dread. He spoke without malice, without poison. They were alone, and for the first time in a long time, he was glad for the chance to talk.

“In my pocket.” He cleared his throat, pulse jumping when Ivan looked down at him. “Same pocket.”

Ivan gazed down at him, eyebrow arched. He reached for his jacket to withdraw in two fingers a creamy linen envelope, unmarked.

He set the flask on the floor beside Alfred’s head to empty its contents into the palm of his hand: a picture and a single white page, folded to fit.

Ivan slipped the letter from its place, opened the page to read Alfred’s handwriting.

_I love my love, and well she knows._

_I love the ground on where she goes._

_And still I hope that the time will come-_

_Still I hope that the time will come-_

_When she and I will be as one._

_Black is the color of my true love’s hair._

“I thought it would help,” Alfred told the window, heart in his throat. He didn’t know where nationheads went after death. He wasn’t certain anyone did.

Ivan didn’t celebrate Christmas anymore, but Alfred remembered how he used to be charmed by the holiday. He thought Christmas in New York was delightful, a carnival all bound up in glittering lights and silver tinsel and delicate crimson ornaments. He’d stood on the street spellbound by the merriment echoed on thousands of blushing faces, by the childrens’ red noses and the music flowing from every open shop door. It was a cacophony, and it was perfect. Ivan hadn’t spoken all night. Alfred had been thrilled to stun the old nation, had blushed every time Ivan’s eyes landed on him. His stomach had fluttered, his face burned, and he’d offered to buy them both a coffee to escape the lights reflected in Ivan’s stare.

An astronaut on the Apollo had taken a picture of he and Ivan looking out the small port window onto the launch pad. Alfred had nearly burned the image, once, in the first violent throes of what became the Cold War. In the end, he’d stuffed the picture in a dresser drawer, unable to keep or to destroy what had once been a happy memory, hope for the future.

“You can keep it.” Alfred swallowed down dryness. “It was yours.”

Ivan spoke without inflection, eyes on the letter. “Why.”

Alfred blinked once, blinded by the light from the yard. “They told us you were gone.”

From somewhere far away, they heard the echo of a door.

Alfred parted his lips, heard himself in the silence of the room. “Who are you?”

Ivan said nothing. Alfred wondered if he even knew.

 “My next president’s here.” Alfred watched snow fill the sill. “Bill Clinton. You can meet him if you want.”

Ivan had laid his hands on the boy in recent years, in the heat of war, in the privacy of hidden hallways and alleys. He had broken fingers, had tasted blood, had reveled in Alfred’s fury and pain and fear.

Alfred contemplated the window, unpredictably quiet and calm for where he had been pinned.

Alfred, Ivan thought: a narrow-bodied farm boy, a conquered wildland. A nation with clear eyes and broad shoulders and Ivan’s blood between his teeth, who arrived in the rubble of his house with a memory and a gift for his grave.

Another door.

Ivan refolded the letter and its lyrics. He slid the page back into its crisp envelope, carefully, with the picture of the Apollo. He refolded the envelope with light fingers.

He returned the letter, the picture, and the flask safely to Alfred’s pocket. “It was a gift.”

Ivan fixed Alfred’s coat, pressed the jacket back into place with thoughtful hands. He took the boy’s arm. He helped him to his feet.

He watched Alfred brush the dust from his sleeve. “Why are you here?”

Alfred jerked his cuff back into place. “I came to help.”

A flash: a silver cufflink caught Ivan’s eye. “I need nothing from you.”

Alfred chewed his tongue, turned the face the window. The lawn was stunning, a shrine to the beauty of a clear winter’s sunset. “How long’s it been since you had a meal?”

Ivan was silent.

Alfred wondered if he stood taller than when Alfred had found him hunched on the stairwell. “Things don’t look great, do they?”

Ivan watched a young man pace past the window. “My people will survive.”

Alfred counted two black dogs on leashes, reached into his coat. “How hungry are they going to be when everything’s gone?”

The warbled murmur of soft voices.

He shook the flask, sent the liquor to singing. Ivan took it.

Alfred watched him unscrew the cap. “We’re calling it U.S. Aid. Looks pretty on paper.”

Ivan lowered the drink, thoughtful, as the sounds of language became clear in the hall.

“I’m bringing you money.” Ivan turned to face him, and Alfred found that he was able to look him right in the eye. “Millions. Security and police, anti-terrorism, reestablishing your government. I have thousands of volunteers to send. I can air drop anything you need.”

Just in case, he added, “We need to move before the scavengers come.”

The flask sent silver shards over the floor, the window, the ceiling, over Alfred. Ivan tilted the drink to watch, layered his voice with venom. “And all from the kindness of your heart.”

“As it stands,” Alfred said quietly, “there are no conditions for repayment.”

Footsteps, near enough to hear.

Ivan felt unease curl in his stomach, contemplated amber liquor. The room closed around him, a thousand points of light to smother and blind. “What do you want?”

The warbled murmur of soft voices outside the door.

“Cooperation.” Alfred told the dogs, the man, the window. Ivan. “Signatures. Public access. Now that you’re here, I need you on board.”

The white reflection of snow from the window cast Alfred’s shadow over the door. Lit him like a living flame. Like the divine. For a barren moment—for half a thought—Ivan thought he felt something stir in his chest.

He offered back the drink, disgusted with himself. “I cannot accept.”

Alfred regarded the flask, then Ivan. Read crows’ feet and pale skin, the cut below his eye, the shadows below his cheeks.

He sent his gaze pointedly over the drink again, jerked his chin. “Bitter pill, huh.”

For a moment, Ivan only looked at him. “You have no desire to do business with me.”

“I had no desire to do business with the Soviet Union. You’re not the Soviet Union.” Alfred swallowed emotion, refused the flask, prayed to god he could keep composure. “Are you.”

He reached into his pocket for the letter, offered it into the space between them, the space filled with white light that set the linen to shining. “You have a right to be here. If you can keep fighting.”

For a long moment, neither of them moved.

Ivan arched a brow in an expression so familiar, so reassuring, that Alfred felt the bizarre urge to take him by the arm, to offer the comfort of a friendly touch. “I don’t need this, Jones.”

Alfred extended the envelope. “I was going to leave it with you anyway.”

Ivan’s patented blank expression cracked. He pressed his eyebrows together, his lips into a pale line. “To extend yourself for personal debt is unwise.”

Pressure grew behind his eyes, in his throat. Alfred prayed to any gods around that he could sound flippant. “You giving me advice, Braginski?”

A knock at the door.

Alfred nodded over his shoulder. “They’re right outside. They need you, Russia. They always will.”

Expression dark, eyes shadowed, bleeding—Ivan extended a hand and took the letter.

Alfred’s stomach surged. He released his arm, his shoulders, his gift for the grave. “There you go.”

Ivan tilted the flask, pressed it to Alfred’s sternum. Quietly: “I don’t like whiskey. Keep this.”

Alfred blinked, twice. He closed a hand over the flask at his chest. He held it tight. “Okay.”

He held out his free hand to shake, scorched in bright white sunlight. “Do we have an agreement, Mister Braginski?”

Ivan fitted his hand to Alfred’s, felt strength and power in his fingers, remembered a much smaller hand. How the boy had grown. How wide, how bold, how clever. “We will see, Mister Jones.”

Alfred took in a cold breath of crisp air. He felt his feet pressed firmly to the foreign ground and thought he could feel the strange continent take a deep breath beneath him, thought he could feel the Earth fall back into rhythm. Dust particles caught the light from the yard, sparkled crimson and orange and sunny yellow. The final moments of Russia’s daylight burst on the flask, exploded over Ivan’s profile like some precious statue, marble and gold and amethyst and ruby red. 

They shook, once, and held.

The door creaked.

He wanted to cry. He wanted to shout. He wanted to hurry his volunteers into airplanes, wanted to sprint home as fast as his legs would carry him. Alfred tore his eyes away from violet light, gave the aides a smile that felt big, even for him.

He and Ivan walked side by side through the palace, past proud eagles, beneath ancient chandeliers, up the grand staircase and to the Winter Garden Room where dignitaries fell into muted silence as they appeared in the door.

Alfred gave his best smile, felt it real and warm and right on his face. “Pardon us, gentlemen. Mister Braginski and I were discussing business and we lost track of time. Mister Russia and I would like to formally extend our thanks to Presidents Yeltsin and Bush, as well as all of you, for your much-appreciated patience. As I’m sure we’re all aware, these things do take a little effort.”

President Yeltsin bowed, standing beside his seat. Alfred noted that he struggled to look Ivan in the eye, and felt nothing but satisfaction. George beamed at him.

Alfred laid a hand on Ivan’s wide shoulder for the whole palace to see. “After speaking with Mister Braginski here, I have nothing but faith in the Russian people’s eventual recovery, and I’d just like to say that I personally am looking forward to re-forging the relations between our two nations.”

Ivan’s face shifted into an expression he didn’t recognize.

Heart pounding, stomach lighter than air, Alfred held out his hand to shake. He gave Ivan’s shoulder a reassuring squeeze as he spoke, met his eyes. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Russian Federation. Here’s to a brighter future for us both.”

Ivan examined his face. The room watched, breathless.

Ivan extended his hand. “A pleasure, Mister Jones. I thank you for your attendance this evening and your kind words.”

Cameras snapped. Alfred barely heard the applause. Ivan’s grip was firm.  

\--

Nightfall at the White House was a quiet affair. American dignitaries rarely worked long hours. The hallways were brightly lit, but the echoes in the hall had vanished out the front door with plans to send aid across the world—after a celebratory drink after hours, of course, now that Yeltsin’s signatures were verified for conditionality, and project U.S. Aid was greenlit to move.

Alfred stayed behind, too energized to sit at home, and only left the building long enough to buy a hot cup of coffee at the shop around the block before returning to his office.

Black lamps illuminated dunes on the ground outside the window, and Alfred thought the gemstone sparkle of the sloped banks was gorgeous, for snow.

He knocked clinging snow from his expensive—water-sealed—shoes. His jacket rustled over the back of his chair. His coffee steamed in its paper cup as he set it on the desk.

His little Martian men waited, lit by the sleepy light from the window and the single bowed lamp.  

He sat, plucked his glossy black pen from its cup.

In dark black ink he marked out the little blue Martian with the flag of the British empire outlined on its hat.

In 1997, the British Empire finalized its last transaction. It was an empire so affluent that its coasts never saw the setting sun, responsible for colonization of a fourth of the entire world and for America himself. An empire that cracked down the middle when one little set of colonies learned how to fire a musket.

He marked out a Martian wearing a hat with familiar colors. The French empire, he thought, had offered an admirable struggle, but it, too, had fallen prey to time. Now a bastion of culture and the butt of every surrender joke on the planet.

He marked out a Martian symbolizing the Spanish empire. A massive impact on his own architecture and language, known for its obsession with death. Incapable of standing on its own, isolated without workable colonies in the new age.

The Holy Roman empire. Still standing, in denial, and in the palm of his hand. He’d made his debut on Germany’s mistakes.

The Han dynasty. Only a memory. China was too occupied with himself to conquer anything, and his standing army was a joke. 

He shifted the page to the side, and with two quick strokes marked out the little blue Martian wearing a cape striped in white, black, and gold.

The Russian empire, Alfred thought, wriggling and snarling and snapping at the fingers of time was nevertheless the final empire to fall, and to suffocate under its own weight could not have been more appropriate. Civil war had not been his intention, but the Soviet Union’s unanticipated disaster had been both unfortunate and a fortunate accident.

He crumpled the paper noisily, pulled his zippo from his pocket. The flame cast the metal grating of the garbage can into orange relief onto the black of the window.

He sifted through the ashes when the fire died to be certain no evidence of his little Martian friends was left behind.

Poetic, he thought. Ashes and memory; and him, holding the lighter.                      

If only Ivan had been there to see him. He would have been proud.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone is curious about the song Ivan is singing, check out "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair" by Peter Hollens and Avi Kaplan on Spotify or Youtube. The first time I heard it, all I could imagine was America and Russia. I've been waiting to use it in a fic ever since, and this was perfect.
> 
> Many thanks to my amazing artist, wands! You can check out these their drawings and more at their tumblr wandschrankheld.tumblr.com. 
> 
> This collaboration has been a huge success. I personally worked on this fic through my marriage this year, through moving plans, and through the busiest autumn season of my life, and I'm so excited to be part of such an incredible project. Enjoy!
> 
> Thanks to everyone who participated in this awesome project. I can't wait to read everything and see your art! Rusame on!


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